


Righteous Anger

by orphan_account



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Arguing, Cissexism, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Prompt Fill, Relationship breakdown, Surgery, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Transgender, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:53:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones fucks up; Chekov snaps.</p><p>Trans* guy Chekov and unintentionally cissexist Bones. </p><p>Fill for the prompt: "Chekov is so fucking done with cis people"</p><p>Extract:<br/>“...Pavel. Look, I'm sorry. I only meant to tell you you had a choice.”<br/>An unqualified apology would have been better; apparently in arguments, Leonard was the exact opposite of the rehearsed, easy man who asked navigators out on dates. No wonder his marriage had gone out with a bang.<br/>“A choice to look how you expected me to look?” Chekov didn't raise his voice, but he wanted to. “It's nice to know zhat zhe right to bodily autonomy was only extended to me so I could meet your expectations.”<br/>“That's not what I meant...” He could see the realisation on McCoy's face; see that that was exactly what Leonard had meant, but that he now regretted it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Righteous Anger

**Author's Note:**

> For context before we begin:  
> I, the author, am indeed trans* myself.  
> And no, I am not against anyone getting as much or as little in terms of medical transition as they want, but in this, Pavel has chosen not to get lower surgery. 
> 
> Fill for:  
> startrekslash.tumblr.com/post/67174456175

McCoy had asked him out on his nineteenth birthday. He wasn't entirely surprised, but he was definitely pleased. Blushing like he had with his first “boyfriend” when he was eleven – after that, he'd skipped so many grades that he was too young for any of the people around him to want to date him, so somehow he was still new to the game.

But Leo, as he called the doctor off shift, was not; despite the hash he'd made of his former marriage, he was smooth and sexy and confident – when he wasn't hiding somewhere he thought was out of sight and panicking. He'd clearly thought the whole thing through down to a script, so Pavel did everything he could to fuck it up – not the relationship, he just wanted to see the real McCoy, not some acted romantic part.

So when Leo asked what he wanted to do on their first date, Pavel had thrown things off – instead of dinner or a holo, he said he wanted to go rock climbing – just to see the Doctor panic when it came to the descent.

It had worked, got him in and under that beautiful freckled skin, at least to first base, which was as far as Pavel had ever gotten with anyone who actually knew his name. It got him a second date, too, just pizza this time, and then a third sneaking around old bars and movie theatres in San Francisco on shore leave in shitty fake moustaches and nose putty trying not to be recognised now that the Enterprise bridge crew were famous. It ended with several viral holos of them making out in a cinema, but it was definitely a date to remember.

Second base Pavel tolerated but at third he balked. Trans people weren't so unusual, in this day and age, but he'd had one night stands comment before. He couldn't handle the same thing from someone he actually cared about. Leonard didn't push it, just moved his fingers out of the waistband of Pavel's jeans and used it to rub circles onto his hip whilst they made out instead. The fourth date was not an overwhelming failure; it just ended at arousal instead of orgasm.

When on the fifth date, Leo didn't even _try_ to get into his pants, Pavel realised he was getting frustrated by his own refusal, and rolled Leonard over to straddle him.

“You don't have to.” Leo said up to him, not looking nearly as confident as he had on that first date – and he could tell that the doctor meant it. If Pavel backed off now, Leo would get up, replicate some kind of dessert and turn on a holo and they'd fall asleep watching it in his bed. Pavel didn't want to fall asleep in Leonard's bed this time – not dressed anyway.

“I want to,” He purred, “Do you want me to?”

Leo's grace went out the window and he nodded stupidly – Pavel didn't mind; it was cute. “Uh-huh.”

Pavel's stomach knotted with anxiety. The doctor knew his history, had his DNA fully coded on his file and administered his hormone implants.

He abandoned his shirt and Leo's hands immediately rose to their favourite places on his torso, teasing Pavel's right nipple and stroking the soft, slightly chubby part of his lower belly where his pubic hair grew in.

Afterwards, Pavel cursed himself for speaking. If he hadn't, Leo would've swallowed his surprise and gotten down to business with no further comment.

At the time, though, it had seemed like conversation might cushion him from a worse reaction.

“Leo...”

Leonard looked up on him. “Is this your first time...?”

Pavel shook his head and smiled, or maybe he grimaced. “No. But zhat is not what I am wanting to say.”

Leo leaned up on his elbows so that they were closer to level. “What is it?”

“I, you know zhat I am... Ah... Zhe equipment is all original...” He stuttered at the doctor's blank face.

It wasn't the first time he'd had this reaction, but something about it coming from Leo as the other man's brain wrapped itself around the implications of the words stung infinitely worse.

Leonard looked puzzled, and then - “Why didn't you get surgery? Pasha, I thought you wanted a dick.”

Pavel slid off of him, suddenly needing to close his legs and draw himself up to full height. He couldn't speak, had to keep his mouth closed against seven years of angry retorts and enforced self-justification, but it might have been better if he had, because Leo just kept digging himself in deeper.

“You know it's free on public healthcare, I could perform it for you. Done it before, in fact, before I joined Starfleet.” Oh great. Another Medical Authority on Pavel's Gender.

“No.” He said simply, dragging his blacks back on over his head and stuffing his feet into his boots.

“Whoa, don't be offended,” Leo looked concerned, but he also looked confused, and somehow that was even more infuriating. “I didn't mean to upset you. I just meant, you know, if you want to be male so much, it's not like it used to be. No scars, no weird pump in one of your balls, no risk of losing it. Full sensation, grown from your own tissue, like any replacement limb or organ.”

“No zhank you.” Chekov tried not to sound bitter but failed. “I do not need your sales pitch. Good night, you can keep zhe holo.”

“What?” Doctor McCoy followed him to the door, tried to block him from leaving. “If you didn't want it you only had so say.”

“Get out of my way.” Chekov wouldn't justify him with an answer, and he sure as hell didn't feel lik he owed the doctor an explanation for his own choice of genitalia.

“Sorry.” Leonard told him; but Chekov could see that he didn't have the slightest idea what he was apologising for.

“Fuck off.” He swept himself from the room, furious, and thundered into a turbolift.

 

 

McCoy wanted to talk to him in his office, and for some reason Chekov allowed it.

He stood outside, willing the anger that shook his fingers and ground his teeth back from whence it came, but it only seemed to have come from the man within the office, and he was forced to go inside with his hackles raised and his muscles tensed to run. Or fight.

“Pasha,” McCoy greeted him.

“Pavel.” Pavel winced at his own correction, but not as visibly as Leonard did.

“...Pavel. Look, I'm sorry. I only meant to tell you you had a choice.”

An unqualified apology would have been better; apparently in arguments, Leonard was the exact opposite of the rehearsed, easy man who asked navigators out on dates. No wonder his marriage had gone out with a bang.

“A choice to look how you expected me to look?” Chekov didn't raise his voice, but he wanted to. “It's nice to know zhat zhe right to bodily autonomy was only extended to me so I could meet your expectations.”

“That's not what I meant...” He could see the realisation on McCoy's face; see that that was _exactly_ what Leonard had meant, but that he now regretted it.

“Zhen what did you mean? I zhought you liked pussy, I'm pretty sure your ex-wife had one or zhis would be less of a shock!” He was more vitriolic than he'd meant to be, all the despair he felt at the prospect of losing their relationship draining out of him and being replaced with near incoherent rage.

McCoy was wide-eyed and defensive, hands raising as Pavel's voice did. “I'm sorry. I just... I thought... I thought that transgender people would want...”

“You zhought you knew what I wanted more zhan I did? You zhought I newer hawe heard of “gender reassignment surgery” or whatewer zhey are calling it zhese days? You zhought zhat when I go to get my first hormones it doesn't occur to any of zhe doctors to mention it, or zhat before I come out in zhe first place I hawe researched any of zhese zhings?”

Leonard shook his head, eyes filling with tears of anger or maybe shame. Perhaps just impending loss.

“You zhink zhat to be a real man I hawe to hawe a penis? Zhat what you zhink?!”

“No, no.” Leonard gulped. “No, I... You're a guy, okay? I know you're a guy, I don't care about - “

“Oh really, you do not care?!”

McCoy shook his head again, the first of those tears falling. Pavel realised that he too was crying, tears running down and turning the neck of his uniform a deep ochre yellow. His eyes stung and his vision blurred and he wiped his nose roughly against his sleeve.

“Please don't be angry with me, I didn't mean to be a dick, okay?”

Too fucking much. It was too fucking much. “Don't be angry wizh you? Don't be fucking angry? You get to treat me like I don't know what is best for my own body and I'm not allowed to be _angry_?” He wheezed and sobbed between sentences. “Zhat's always zhe way isn't it? People like, you, you stupid fucking white cisgender men, you treat eweryone else like shit and we're not allowed to react because you don't like it when we're angry!” Pavel was spitting, gaining momentum with his words. His whole body shook and trembled like he was having an episode – which, in retrospect, he was - “Because angry people won't take your fucking shit! People like you will take eweryzhing, you take ewen our right to be angry! Stop fucking crying! Stop crying! I won't be made to feel guilty about zhis!”

But he did feel guilty about this, regardless of whether Leonard deserved his guilt, and he felt so raw and upset and hurt that he had to cover his face with his forearms to sponge away the wet of tears and snot and sweat. He sobbed noisily until he lost all his breath, the sound protecting him from hearing Leonard's quieter tears.

As soon as he was could force himself to move, he did, stormed out through the door and rushed into the lift.

Just his luck that Sulu and Uhura were already in it. “Deck five.” He said, facing away from them and willing his voice to be steady.

“Shit, you look like a mess,” Hikaru tried to turn him around by the shoulder.

Pavel shook him off, unable to be seen in such a state. He threw his arms up around his head as though to protect himself from a blow.

“Pavel, are you alright?” Nyota asked, careful not to come to close.

“Just leawe me alone!” He'd meant to shout it, but the words came out as a low, pleading moan. “Please, just... Please leawe me alone, please leawe me alone.”

He was aware that he was muttering, that he must have looked insane, but there was nothing he could do about it. When the turbolift opened out onto his floor, he fled to his quarters with no consideration whatsoever for the fact that he was abandoning his shift halfway through. What on Earth had he been thinking, going there during his break?

He cried into his pillow so hard he thought he might be sick, but he passed out on the floor of his bedroom before he could do anything about it.

 


	2. Bodily Autonomy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the ending proper, or simply, the bittersweet version. 
> 
> If you want the other ending, read this one and then read the next chapter, which essentially contains one more paragraph.

Pavel looked down at himself in the full length mirror in his bathroom. It wasn't the first time that he'd felt conflicted about what he saw, but it was the first time in a long time that he had truly hated what he found there. 

“Get it off!” He growled at the mirror. “Get it off getitoffgetitoffofme!”

“Pasha?” It was Sulu on his door to their shared facilities. “Are you okay?”

Pavel closed his eyes, resting his head on the cool transparent aluminium of the mirror, inhaling deeply. “Yes, Hikaru, I am fine. Piss somewhere else, I am hawing a shower.”

 

 

“Do your fucking surgery.” Pavel never used to swear.

Doctor McCoy jumped at the command, dropping a petri dish which bounced but miraculously didn't shatter against the floor. “W-what?”

“Phalloplasty. Take a sample of my cells, grow zhe tissue. Giwe me zhe surgery. Phalloplasty, scrotoplasty, oophorectomy. Do it.” He proffered his body in front of the doctor as he placed the petri dish back in its incubator. 

“Pavel...” McCoy rubbed his eyes with his forefinger and thumb. “I'm so sorry. I really am. I've been a complete – I don't even know what to say. I feel terrible.”

“Your guilt does nozhing for me,” He said, blankly, because he was no longer able to summon the distilled rage from their last encounter, but nor was he ready to release it.

Leonard bit his lip. “I know. I was wrong. You can't do this for me, or for anyone else or their expectations. Don't do it.”

“I am doing it for myself,” Pavel told him, frown wrinkling his forehead, “Because it does not matter what I want for my body. It does not outweigh zhe fact zhat I hawe to deal wizh... People like you, ewery day. And I cannot do zhis any more.”

They were both blinking rapidly, breathing fast. 

“Please, Pasha,” Leonard called on his diminutive, accent thickening with misery. “Please, I was wrong. You're fine, gorgeous as you are, you don't need to do this. You're not in your right mind...”

Pavel shook his head emphatically. “No, no. No Leo, you are going to do it. You are not going to pazhologise my anger. You are going to harwest my cells, and you are going to be ready to perform zhe surgery as soon as possible, and you are going to do it. I will go over eweryzhing wizh Doctor M'Benga, because frankly, I hawe no interest in enduring zhis conwersation again whizh you.”

Leo straightened, tears again leaking down his cheek. “And if I refuse?”

Pavel swallowed the lump in his throat, but his voice was hard, firm, bitter. “It is informed consent at zhe patient's request, not at zhe doctor's discretion. You hawe two options to refuse me. Zhe first, you giwe no excuse; it will look like discrimination, and you will lose your post and I will not defend you. Zhe second, you claim I cannot make zhe decision on mental healzh grounds, and I will lose my posting. And zhen, when I get back to Earzh, I will get anozher surgeon to do zhe operation, and zhen I will claim discrimination, and _zhen_ you will lose your job.”

He held out an arm, eyes burning through the tears into Leonard's.

After a moment, Leo looked away, down at the limb. He licked his lips with a dry tongue and spoke, resigned. “It will be faster if I take bone marrow.”

Pavel nodded. “Okay.”

He lay on the bed whilst Leonard used a marrow extractor to take his sample.

As soon as he was finished he took his hand off Pavel's knee like it was on fire, and stepped back, unable to face him. 

“It will be ready in a little under two hundred hours, providing there's no major emergency. I'll assign you medical leave for the operation. Twenty four hours is standard recovery time, but you're entitled to up to three days off. Doctor M'Benga will probably call you in to talk details today or tomorrow...” Leonard trailed into silence. Pavel had nothing to say, couldn't acknowledge the silent plea. 

He got up off the biobed, his thigh weird and numb from the local anaesthetic. “...I will see you in eight days...”

 

 

Pavel was sedated on his table. For the first five minutes, Bones simply sat on a chair by the biobed and stared at the floor. His guilt did no one any good, Pasha had told him as much. Redundancy did not negate its presence. 

Eventually, he stood up and began taking the scans of Pavel's body, laid out bare to him like this and not how it should have been, in his bed. Internal. External. Tissue type analysis. 

Such a simple surgery, these days. It only seemed to emphasise how much of a bastard he was. 

Fifty-three minutes – once unthinkably short. A few cuts here; all neurons already perfectly aligned and sealed and hooked up; all blood vessels linked together, fat deposits repositioned. And that was it. 

 

 

The Pavel Chekov in the bathroom mirror looked and felt no different from before. He looked down at his penis with a vague sense of unease, but no real emotion to speak of. Overly symmetrical, but he supposed that it'd look less over-perfect with use and age, if he chose to let either happen. 

Thicker than his clit had grown on testosterone; the skin smooth and new. More foreskin. Balls were new, tight and hairless – his pubes would grow in over the next month or so. No additional orifices to speak of; his ovaries and womb consigned to a three-dimensional model on a medical computer. 

It was no different, really, no different from before. 

 

 

Christine dealt with Chekov's aftercare, and he left sickbay to recuperate in his room on ibuprofen alone just four hours after he awoke from the anaesthetic.

Bones had no idea whether he was welcome in Pavel's quarters, but he went anyway after giving him the first 24 hours to get back on his feet.

His palms were sweating so severely that he was considering medicating for anxiety, and he had dark blue patches on the bottom of his uniform shirt where he'd repeatedly wiped them. 

“Goddamn it Leonard, you're thirty one!” He muttered to himself. He'd already made his decision; there was no reason for him to be nervous. 

Pavel must have heard him through the door, because it slid open to reveal him on the other side. 

“Are you hawing a heart attack?” Pavel asked, taking him in, but lacking the sense of urgency that would suggest genuine concern. 

“Maybe a panic attack.” The doctor heard himself reply. 

Pavel's lips twitched. “Come in.”

Pavel's quarters were littered with teenage debris and lumps of metal and wires appropriated from engineering. 

Pavel himself... Did not look as bad as Leonard had perhaps feared.

“I'm going to resign.” Bones said, before he talked himself out of saying anything at all. “I thought you had the right to know, you know, before... Before I...”

Pavel licked his lips thoughtfully. “Why?”

“Because you were right. It was transphobia. I shouldn't have even – I wasn't – I let you down.” Leonard's previously dry mouth was suddenly hypersalivating, trying to choke him from saying the words. “I don't think I've ever let a patient down that bad, much less someone I cared about. I won't ask you to forgive me, cos I know I don't deserve it, but I want you to know that I'm really, really sorry.”

The silence grew between them until it seemed like Pavel might never speak, and Bones nearly turned to leave, but then, “You do not deserwe it. But you will not resign.”

Leonard shook his head, confused. “I will, I don't even deserve this stupid job, you don't deserve me, you shouldn't have to put up with seeing people like me around here...”

“I will hawe to see people like you around here regardless of whezher you leawe or not. And you don't deserwe my forgiweness, but I suppose you will hawe to hawe it anyway.” Pavel sighed.

It was Leonard's turn to ask. “Why would you do that for me?”

Pavel smiled remedially. “I am not. I am doing it for myself, because being so angry wizh you, it is not good for me. Please sit down,” He gestured to the desk chair, “You are make me anxious because you are looking always like you are about to run away.”

“I am.” Bones told him, but sat down anyway. Pavel dragged the arm chair in the opposite corner over, displacing what looked to be some kind of transporter mechanism from its home in the centre of the floor. “What I did-”

“-Was not zhat bad, relatiwely speaking. Or at least, was not uncommon.” Pavel cut him off, forceful, but no longer angry. “Was zhe last straw. Of many.”

The both sat awkwardly in the revelation that, whilst Bones was indeed the focus of Pavel's anger, he was, for the most part, only part of a bigger problem. Only a trigger. 

“How's the, ah-” He started to say.

“It's a penis.” Pavel shrugged. “It works. I checked.”

Leonard nodded, slightly distressed by the apparent indifference. “You sound kinda dissociated...”

Pavel fiddled with a broken PADD on the table. “No more zhen before. There is not a lot of difference in how I feel about it from before. Just... It's different. I don't know. Would you like a drink?” He reached beneath the desk and pulled out a half full bottle.

“It's three pm.” Bones said, not recognising it for the peace offering that it was. 

“It's wodka.” Pavel uncapped the bottle and took a swig. “There is no wrong time of day for wodka.”

Bones had to agree, although he found the taste repulsive, at least the burn took the edge off. 

“What I did to you – I mean, the operation. It's reversible. I can undo it. I'd need a few days to grow new tissue, but-”

“Not yet. I will get used to it before I decide.”

“Yeah, okay.” Leonard took another swallow. “That sounds sensible.”

When he looked up, Pavel was holding out a box of tissues. He took them. “D'you want me to put these somewhere?”

“You are crying.”

He was. “Shit.” He blew his nose noisily and through the tissue into the waste disposal. Relief, he realised. He'd only ever felt like this once, bringing Jim back from well over the edge. The connection only served to make him cry harder, and they sat there as he made considerable headway into Pavel's ever more suspect tissue hoard. 

Eventually, Pavel came to a decision and bumped legs with him under the table, clumsily rubbing. 

“Leo, would you like to go on a date wizh me?” Leonard – Leo – stopped crying out of shock. 

“Yes!” He was quick to accept before he gave into his own curiosity. “Why? After everything...”

Pavel huffed out a sigh and moved to sit on the desk in front of him, arms finally reaching out after days of cold abstinence. 

Leo flung himself into them and clung on. 

“Because I like you. And because I need to try out zhis new penis on someone before I know if it is permanent fixture.”

They kissed, and it wasn't nearly so pretty as Pasha was; it was snotty and more than a little desperate. “You have a terrible sense of humour.” Bones informed the line of his jaw, just below his ear.

Pavel puffed himself up. “Humour was inwented in Russia.” He asserted, but not with the usual confidence with which he usually made such announcements. He slumped where he sat above Leo, leaning his weight onto the older man's shoulders. “I'm so tired...”

“I know,” Leo did his best to hold him up, but Pavel's limbs were loose and heavy and he slid forward off the table, into Leo's lap, tucking his head under the doctor's chin. “I know sweetheart. I'm sorry I let you get so worn down.”

 


	3. I don't have that long

“What you are meaning, seweral minutes? I hawe to wait for zhis to work again?” Pavel was, for want of a better word, appalled. “Change it back at once!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is barely a chapter, but...


End file.
